Does the Fitbit host fill in intraday activity minutes regardless of wear?

[Kevin_H]

I would like to optimize my activity minutes processing algorithm. In our testing it appears that activity minutes can be downloaded even for periods where I haven't worn the device, and they seem to always be in ascending order. Can I rely on that? Specifically, do the following two characteristics hold true?

1. Fitbit will always create 1440 minutes for a 24 hour period, there are no gaps.
2. The minutes are delivered in strict ascending order.

(I've already added the needed heuristics to deal with time zone issues using participant time zone and the researchers are aware of the potential problems for traveling participants.)

[IoanbsuFitbit · Accepted solution]

Kevin_H,

1. even though Fitbit is currently interpolates data for you for some endpoints I'd not rely on it.

Every response from Fitbit that contains time series data has each point linked to it's time. Which means that at client side you should be able to interpolate missing data. 

In future, in order to optimize outgoing traffic, we may choose not to send all the data points in response, but only data points that have values linked to it and have clients to interpolate missing data. For example, the HR endpoints currently do not send data for the minutes that have no data and rely on clients to interpolate this.

2. yes that is true now and will be true in future. Though in future there may be gaps in data points as I mentioned at 1.